FreeHolder Alpha 8 Hotfix 1
3.7.2020
Weather Resistance, Disease, and Fatigue
I've made some changes, increased some of the difficulty and rebalanced these factors. Please see below for the extended notes on all of this; there's too much text to put it at the top. If you notice a significant change in overall game difficulty, please provide feedback about it! I only want the game to be a little harder as a result of these changes. Thanks!
Upcoming
More bugfixes, changing the town/bandit level, patrol, and attacking mechanics to be more predictable, comprehensible, and useful, in eventual preparation for the long-awaited overhaul and tremendous improvement to the mid-game. Stay tuned! We are getting there.
Bugfixes
Campaign Mode Fixes
-In campaign mode, invaders no longer remain on tiles after defeating them
-Equipment no longer disappears from existence after defeating tile invaders in campaign mode
Tool Fixes
-Fishing Net now functions properly, you cannot set fishing net without consuming tool durability
Equipment Fixes
-Cooling Tunic graphic now appears properly
Changes
Weather Changes
-Increased the overall action roll penalties for working in most weather types except blizzard, subzero and snow
-Rebalanced fatigue penalties given for working in inclement weather
-Rebalanced fatigue reduction given by weather gear
Action Changes
-Rebalanced the fatigue reduction given by "Resist Fatigue" gear
Developer Notes
Weather Resistance, Disease, and Fatigue
With the updated weather resistance system and new clothing types to go with it, I have also had to make some adjustments to how much weather is going to penalize action rolls. It sounds a bit harsh, but I have roughly doubled the overall penalties applied to rolls for the non-cold weather types; however, even a bit of resistance clothing significantly reduces they penalties. I have left the cold weather penalties alone for now as winter is unavoidable no matter what seed you roll, and you may or may not be able to get much resist gear together depending on circumstances. And they were pretty nasty already. ;)
Inclement weather has two non-specific effects: penalties to action rolls AND increased fatigue when taking actions. Fatigue is a hidden value that essentially increases your character's chance to get sick at the end of the turn. These mechanics rely upon your common sense to intuit them: certain actions, for example chopping wood, are more strenuous and cost more fatigue than others, say cooking a meal. You should be aware that actions at your villa always ignore weather effects as you perform them indoors. This fatigue amount per action is increased by inclement weather, and is reduced by weather resist equipment and the coveted resist fatigue property, and also mitigated by rue and many other game effects. The specific effects of weather you already know: wet weather waters your crops, droughts require double water, extra actions are required to go to market in storms, etc.
I have also rebalanced the disease mechanics somewhat, as I didn't like the way I was performing some of the calculations. For you, there probably won't be that much of a noticeable change. Essentially I have removed the base weather disease penalties and replaced them with the fatigue penalties I mentioned earlier, so what it amounts to is you will be less likely than before to get sick if you are careful about avoiding difficult actions in harsh weather, and more likely than before if you push yourself really hard in said weather. It therefore also makes weather resist equipment much more helpful. Of particular note is that it is now possible to immediately become very sick from healthy under rare circumstances, such as overworking in storms when there is a disease event occurring, or so forth. I don't like that you always have ordinary sick status to buffer you, sometimes, you just get a horrible illness. It happens.
A Note On Difficulty
I should say it is unlikely that the difficulty of FreeHolder in general is ever going to go down, unless I get a considerable amount of complaints about specific mechanics that are too harsh. However, I should say that it is my intention that the mid-game and end-game should have significant increases in difficulty each time, so it will not be necessary for the early game to be brutally difficult; those seeking a challenge will need only to get past the beginning, which many players can already do easily enough. Although: this will come down more to balancing different needs than simply making everything harder to do per se, in fact since you are arguably getting more and more powerful throughout the game, the difficulty increase effectively needs to be parabolic to get ahead of your linear progression, i.e. as you get linearly stronger, the game must get exponentially harder for it actually become relatively more difficult against your increased abilities. Unfortunately there is no equation for this, just continual attempts and refining through playtesting.
I must stress that mid-game is soon slated to undergo a massive overhaul in mechanics and execution, and is not very playable or free of glitches, nor does it represent the intended mid-game experience in any way, except for invasions of your tiles, though I don't think it would be happening as often or as soon when I get back to redoing it all. It does offer some increased challenge, but is unreliable. I should also mention at SOME point we will have difficulty flags for people that wish to increase the difficulty for their playthroughs. That's a good ways away right now though; we have to get the core experience right.
Thank you, everyone!